Business

Bridging the Cultures of Business and Poverty

LISA HUDSON’S PERSONAL SITUATION REFLECTS THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF WELFARE: SHE IS A
SINGLE mother with four children. She’s far from the unfortunate stereotype of a lazy welfare recipient,
however, working the day shift, taking a full college course load after work, and then studying
until 1:30 a.m. Over the course of the day she shuttles her children between two childcare providers.
Hudson assembles parts for car dashboards and is a client in a
welfare-to-work program, but sees her
future in the field of psychology rather than on the shop floor. “I love it [but] it’s not what I want to
do. … I’m going to school for psychology, but in the meantime, if it takes me ten years to get finished
with my degree, I’ll be here until it’s finished.”

Hudson is one of more than 500 welfare recipients who have participated in Michigan-based Cascade
Engineering’s “welfare-to-career” (W2C) program. Cascade reaps benefits from the program
too, making it a win-win for all involved. Still, no one at Cascade, including the privately held firm’s
CEO and Chairman Fred Keller, would say that the program’s 11-year journey has been an easy one.
The plastics manufacturer has traveled the path, first alone and then with partner agencies, in many
small and fitful steps. With each step, the challenges that people in poverty face have become more
apparent to Cascade managers, as has the need for countervailing support systems. The process has
been one of continual improvement, with many cycles of observation, hypothesis building, experimentation, and more observation. Ultimately,
the sustained commitment of
the firm’s senior management and partner
agencies has been critical to the program’s
success.

Welfare-to-Career Champions

The success of the welfare-to-career program
at Cascade is due in large part to
two champions who are committed to
the program’s success. Fred Keller makes
the environment safe for innovation and
the accompanying intermittent failures.
Ron Jimmerson, human resources manager
of community partnerships and
workforce diversity, is the innovator who
built the coalition of partners that supports
the welfare-to-career program and
has played the dominant role in building
a bridge between Cascade’s culture and
the culture of poverty that allows former
welfare recipients to join the working
class.

Keller and Jimmerson come from
diametrically opposed backgrounds.
Keller, now in his fifties, graduated from
Cornell University in 1967, worked as a
metallurgist at Pratt and Whitney for
six years, and earned an MBA from Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute. He was convinced
that corporate America was
“doing it wrong” and started Cascade to
pursue, in his words, “worthy goals.”

Tall and well-spoken, Keller doesn’t
think that the role of business is to focus
only on economic success, especially at
society’s expense, and then just “give
back” charity to the community. He
believes in “doing something good and
then making it good business,” looking
for win-win outcomes for Cascade and
society together. Accordingly, Cascade
measures its success using a “threelegged”
strategy that is comprised of
financial returns, environmental performance,
and social impact. Indeed, in
Keller’s experience, greater environmental
or social performance often provides
Cascade with economic benefit
either directly or indirectly through
improved morale and more dedicated
employees. Making good things into
good business sometimes requires time,
and private ownership affords Keller the
necessary patience.

Keller’s desire to help welfare recipients
fits his ethos; breaking the cycle of
generational poverty1 was a worthy goal,
and he foresaw benefits for his company,
its employees, and the Grand Rapids
community. Cascade would sustain its
workforce and improve its work environment,
society’s cost of welfare assistance
would decrease, and welfare clients
would lead better lives. Cascade’s altruistic
intentions are evident – the program
started in 1991 before labor was
scarce. But the need for workers in the
hot economy of the late 1990s bolstered
the business case for welfare to work.
According to Mike Goldman, Cascade’s
vice president of business services,
unemployment was 1 percent at that
time, which made finding workers
through traditional channels difficult.

Jimmerson, the program’s other
champion, grew up in generational
poverty, in a single-parent household.
Disaffected by society, he dropped out of
school. “In my growing up there was a
lot of animosity and hatred toward white
people because I felt powerless,” he
recalled. “I can remember going to high
school and in history class there was
nothing in there about what blacks had
contributed to America. … So that doesn’t
give a minority person any self-esteem
as far as the whole American system.
So I had a lot of bitterness that you will
probably find in all the working poor, not
just African Americans.”

Jimmerson became a licensed social
worker in a substance abuse clinic before
joining Cascade and has made the transition
from poverty to middle class. He
now works in many ways to help others
through the same transition, including
championing Cascade’s W2C program
and providing a ministry to prisoners.
Another way is by being a positive role
model. “I still live in what is known as ‘the
hood’ … and I refuse to move out because
I want to be a role model for kids that are
down there. … When I was growing up
in my local community all I saw was the
pimps, the drug dealers, the prostitutes,
the robbers, and the thieves. I never saw
those positive role models.”

The two cultures from which these
men come represent the two cultures
that are merged in Cascade’s W2C program.
Despite their different backgrounds,
Keller and Jimmerson shared a
vision of a successful welfare-to-work
program that never faded, despite a number
of false starts.

The Development of the
Welfare-to-Career Program

False Starts Cascade’s welfare-to-work
program was not immediately successful;
it is a sustained learning process that
continues today. There were two “false
starts” that preceded the current version.
The first experiment was in 1991,
when Jimmerson, then the human
resources manager for one of Cascade’s
divisions, partnered with Faith, Inc. to
recruit the unemployed and homeless in
the Heartside area of Grand Rapids.2
Faith, Inc. provided pre-employment job
training, and the state of Michigan heavily
subsidized the purchase of a van for
welfare recipients to drive themselves
to work.

Within two weeks, all 10 welfare
recipients who Jimmerson recruited
through Faith, Inc. either quit or were
fired. “We had the employees drive, and
so they would stop at the liquor store and
the dope house, and if the driver didn’t
come in then none of them came in.”
The partnership had not considered that
welfare recipients were unaccustomed to
work culture and responsibilities.

The welfare-to-work idea lay dormant
until 1995, when Keller and Stuart
Ray, the owner of a number of Burger
King franchises in western Michigan,
developed a partnership to help people
learn work skills in two stages. They
called it the Work-to-Work Program. At
Burger King, welfare clients would learn
the responsibilities that were missing in
the Faith, Inc. venture. As Keller recalled,
“They could learn team skills, and learn
how to get to work in the morning, and
how to set the alarm clock, and all that
sort of thing.” Keller then promised
those employees a career at Cascade if
they stayed at Burger King for six
months. In theory, both companies
would reduce turnover. Six months was
longer than many workers lasted at
Burger King, and the “trained” employees
would have a greater chance of succeeding
at Cascade.

Reality, however, did not match the
theory. Cascade did not hire one
employee from Burger King, because all
their hires were either fired or quit before
the six months were up. “We found that
the pay range at Burger King was really
much too low for these welfare mothers
to support their families. … They had
already [worked in the fast food industry]
and so they were not really interested in
that whole process,” Jimmerson commented.
“The other problem was that
the Burger King managers, and even
Cascade at that time, didn’t understand
the whole culture [of diversity], and so
many of the Burger King managers were
resistant to the program.”

Learning from Failure It must be easy
for managers to conclude that welfare
recipients neither have the will to work
nor see value in a middle-class lifestyle
when they experience failures similar to
Cascade’s early attempts. Once Cascade
honed its approach, Jimmerson
explained, welfare clients could embrace
life in the working world – given hope,
an appropriate work environment, and
help increasing their self-esteem. “When
they begin to see all the opportunities
that they can have here at Cascade Engineering,
the benefits, when we’re talking
about diversity, trusting and caring, and
valuing people … their appetites begin to
open up. They become very hungry [and
begin to ask] ‘How can I have these
things? How can I have this peace and this
joy?’”

Until 1997, Cascade had not found
the keys to providing such an environment.
Through two failures, however,
Cascade managers began to identify the
obstacles to hiring welfare recipients,
which included coping with differences
between Cascade’s expectations of W2C
clients and the culture of poverty, providing
support for W2C clients where
their resources were lacking, and enlisting
the support of social agencies where
Cascade alone could not provide the
necessary support.

Recognizing Two Cultures: Poverty
and the Middle Class An awareness
that people on welfare lived in a different
culture than most Cascade employees
dawned when Keller attended the Institute
for Healing Racism. Goldman
described how understanding racism
was a precursor to understanding classism
and forced people to “confront their
own stereotypes about people … of
color.”

Goldman made another vital discovery through his work with a Head-
Start program that helped Cascade managers
better understand the W2C clients’
perspective. The principal gave him a
copy of A Framework for Understanding
Poverty, by Dr. Ruby Payne, used to help
students from poverty cope in the middle-
class school environment. Payne
describes the “rules” of each of three
social classes – poverty, middle class, and
wealth – and how people in one culture
are generally unaware of the rules of
the others.3

Now mandatory for every employee,
W2C or otherwise, the “Hidden Rules”
training based on Payne’s book helps
the W2C clients understand the middle-
class workplace, while also helping
non-W2C employees and managers recognize
the challenges faced by W2C
clients. Andy Zylstra, director of the
Kent County Family Independence
Agency (FIA), a state of Michigan agency,
emphasized the importance of Payne’s
work. “You just can’t appreciate it
enough, the impact that Ruby Payne
and her philosophy and her approach
has made on this community. Because I
grew up in the 1960s where … you didn’t
make moral judgments and everything
like that. When I heard Ruby Payne
start talking about class differences,
immediately it kind of put me off until
you recognize that you’re telling people
no matter what their background is,
business is the middle class, and as Ruby
Payne puts it, there are rules.”

Managers’ heightened sensitivity to
the poverty culture enables them to interpret
behavior that might otherwise be
construed as disrespectful, antagonistic,
or irresponsible as an artifact of the
W2C employee’s background and as an
indication that support rather than discipline
is needed. Even occurrences
seemingly as innocuous as [W2C
clients being] sick or wanting to go
home,” according to Ed Baweja, a production
supervisor, could be a sign “that
they are having a problem outside of
work.” Such absences can be symptomatic
of problems with children or other
domestic disturbances. When W2C
employees do not notify their supervisors
of absences, Cascade managers have
learned that it isn’t because they are
intentionally irresponsible. Those in the
culture of poverty value the people in
their lives first and foremost; because of
this, some W2C employees will, when
caught in a moment of domestic crisis
with insufficient support systems, instinctively
tend to the needs of their loved
ones and forget to call their supervisors.

A Strong Partner and a Ripe Opportunity
The structure of the current W2C
program began to emerge in 1997, and
Cascade’s timing was just right. Congress
had passed the Personal Responsibility
and Work Opportunity Reconciliation
Act (PRWORA) in 1996, and the
state of Michigan was eager to show
progress toward getting people from
welfare to work. This, perhaps, is what
allowed three key individuals in the Kent
County FIA the necessary latitude to
create an innovative program.

Zylstra, Randy Koekkoek, a manager
who works under him, and FIA
caseworker Joyce Bosscher had seen
the ineffectiveness of welfare assistance
firsthand, and Cascade was their opportunity
to finally structure a program
that worked. “We’ve been ready to do
something like this for years,” said Zylstra,
but finding a business partner with
Keller’s commitment had been difficult.
Koekkoek knew that Bosscher, a
28-year veteran in the welfare services
field, was perfect for the task of onsite
client support at Cascade, one of
the innovative features of the emerging
program. Bosscher is intensely caring,
which she says comes from a good
upbringing – guidance from loving parents,
a large social family, and Christian
values. She said that her job at Cascade
is “the first time that I feel as
though I have made a difference in people’s
lives.” Bosscher has passed up
opportunities to apply for promotions
in order to stay with the program.

Working with Partners to Support
Welfare Clients Managers have found
that, besides learning the “hidden rules,”
W2C clients had to overcome other
poverty-induced obstacles. Consistent
with welfare-to-work programs nationwide,
W2C clients often lacked reliable
transportation and childcare, and suffered
from domestic and substance
abuse.4 In 1997, Jimmerson assumed his
current position and, with vital support
from FIA managers, developed a coalition
of agencies to meet these needs.
Transportation needs are provided for by
a local ministry called Angels Wings,
which Cascade partially supports, and the
Kent Regional Community Coordinated
Child Care helps clients find suitable
childcare. The FIA coordinates a host of
other agencies that are contractors to
the state of Michigan that help with job
training and on-site (emotional) adjustment to the workplace, including
the Area Community Services
Employment and Training
Council (also known as
Work First or Michigan-
Works!), Ross Learning, and
Goodwill Industries of Greater
Grand Rapids, Inc.

The coalition didn’t come
together overnight and, from
Cascade’s perspective, it took
time before all the social agencies
could focus solely on the
W2C clients’ needs rather than
on their own interests. A facilitator
was hired to help with
the relationship-building
process and, with time, the
coalition members “divided
up the turf ” so that the responsibilities
of each agency were
clear and all of the clients’
needs were provided for.

On-site Support Jimmerson
and Koekkoek concluded that
the typical support provided
to welfare recipients was insufficient.
Social workers shouldered
high caseloads, and
clients received infrequent and
impersonal service at large
centralized social agency
offices. Also, after clients are
placed in a job, most government-
supported agencies provide
support for only 90 days. “You’ve
got people who have been in generational
poverty, or poor for a long time,
and 90 days is not enough,” commented
Jimmerson. Once an employee was
placed in a job, the FIA often heard of
problems only after it was too late, usually
when the welfare recipient reapplied
for assistance after quitting or being fired.

Jimmerson and Koekkoek worked
around this problem by placing FIA caseworkers
on-site at Cascade, an arrangement
that no other employer in Michigan
has. On-site caseworkers provide
Cascade W2C clients with more responsive
support, especially because they
handle smaller caseloads – 50 per caseworker
rather than 150 at the centralized
facilities. Even after the official government
90-day cutoff for support, on-site
caseworkers continue to provide clients
with unofficial support.

As an on-site caseworker, Bosscher
quickly troubleshoots problems. She is
alerted to potential problems by daily email
messages from the supervisors of
W2C clients. If W2C clients are absent,
for example, Bosscher locates them and
finds out why they did not
come to work. Problems due
to the conflict between the two
cultures are addressed before
an employee is terminated
because of them.

Bosscher finds resources
for clients when their support
systems break down. One
client’s truck broke down, and
Bosscher helped her find a car.
As the client explained, “Yes,
she tells me that there are these
programs out there and if
something goes wrong they
help me get a car. I got a 1990
Probe that’s real nice for
$1,000. … They say that I was
dependable and they said,
‘Well, let’s get her in a car so
she can get here.’”

Bosscher also counsels
W2C clients before stressful
meetings with supervisors to
help clients cope with the culture
of work. For example, a
common and acceptable
response in the culture of
poverty to criticism from a
supervisor is anger, which can
lead to self-destructive behavior
such as quitting. Bosscher
prevents such reactions to criticism
by discussing with the
client beforehand what his or
her natural interpretation and
response to such a situation might be and
what the proper reaction is in the work
culture.

Bosscher addresses not only the social
issues in the workplace but also those at
home, because they eventually affect job
performance. Being in the W2C program
can lead to new behaviors, for
example, which sometimes touch off
domestic disputes that can lead to abuse
and absence from work. According to
Jimmerson, “Many of the women end
up in the Women’s Resource Center –
that’s one of our partners for domestic
violence – because now the mother is trying
to save money rather than spend it,
which is a typical trait of those living in
generational poverty, and the boyfriend
or the husband is mad and so he goes
into a violent rage.”

W2C clients appreciate the close,
personal attention, especially in comparison
with the traditional support provided
at large centralized facilities. As
Hudson said: “Like when those
[case]workers were down at FIA, they
weren’t personal. I didn’t want to be
bothered with them and they didn’t want
to be bothered with me really. But here,
I know [Bosscher] cares.” Hudson appreciates
that the caseworkers and the other
support systems are available on-site.
“Everything you need is right here.”

Continual interaction engenders personal
relationships between Bosscher
and the W2C clients, many of whom
consider her to be more friend than caseworker.
Close personal relationships and
confidential support often motivate
W2C clients to approach Bosscher rather
than a Cascade manager when work or
domestic issues arise. The feedback
received allows her to arrange special
accommodations with Cascade management
for clients in extreme situations
(without divulging confidential details).
“We had a domestic violence situation.
… [A female worker] was missing work
because she was so beat up and abused,”
said Bosscher, “and we identified that
and the company gave her a week off
and we put her into an emergency shelter
and got her connected with the legal
system. … She came back after a week
and walked in and gave her first-line
supervisor a big hug and thanked him for
that kind of support. Would another
company do it? Maybe, but they’d never
know that this was going on. The compassion
might exist in a lot of companies,
but probably not like this one.”

Goodwill Industries, which also provided
on-site support, is another example
of an agency willing to “bend the
rules.” Goodwill provided a retention
specialist, Scherry Shabazz, who visited
clients on the night shift. Although Goodwill
workers are not formally allowed to
provide support for clients past the first
30 days of employment, Scherry’s supervisors
allowed her to provide informal
support for W2C clients past that limit,
and Scherry didn’t hesitate to stop and
ask former clients how they were doing.

Retaining W2C Clients

Turnover data from Cascade’s early welfare-
to-work efforts showed that clients
were lost primarily in the first two weeks
of employment. Cascade managers
believe that exposure to cultural and
diversity awareness, including Payne’s
Hidden Rules, can prevent early causes
of turnover, and so half of the one-week
training program for new employees is
spent on this and similar topics. The
other half is devoted to on-the-job training.

Cascade managers attribute higher
retention of W2C clients, as well as other
employees, to the training and W2C
support efforts. The monthly turnover
rate for W2C employees is currently
around 3 percent per month and is all
due to involuntary termination. The
turnover rate for all non-W2C Cascade
employees is approximately 1.4 percent
per month, which is due to both voluntary
and involuntary termination. While
a 3 percent turnover rate is a marked
improvement over performance early
on in the program and over typical welfare-
to-work retention, it nonetheless
implies an annual retention rate on the
order of 69 percent.

W2C workers describe the Cascade
work environment as supportive and
familylike. Robin Hughes, for example,
enjoys working there so much that she’d
rather stay at Cascade than return to
her former higher-paying job at the company
that laid her off. “Here, it’s more
family,” she explained. “This is my
home.” Like all Cascade employees,
Robin started at $10 an hour as a
“Level A” employee; she would like to
progress to a “Level D” technical position
in quality control. Cascade was able to
accommodate Robin with a day shift
job so that she could be with her daughter
after school. Goodwill Industries
helped Robin get to work for three
months when she didn’t have money
to pay for insurance and registration
for her car.

The Costs and Benefits of W2C

I conducted a pro forma analysis, based
roughly on Cascade’s experience, to
gauge the benefits of welfare-to-work
programs on: (1) a company and (2) the
government and government-affiliated
agencies that support that company,
which I treat as a collective unit.5

The analysis was aimed at assessing
the marginal benefit provided by a welfare-
to-work program based on the relevant
cost components that we found at
Cascade.

From a company’s perspective, costs
involve the initial investment, including
training; hiring costs for welfare-to-work
clients; and support for transportation
and childcare assistance.

What is a benefit to Cascade, however,
results in costs to the governmentaffiliated
agencies. These include wage
subsidies for welfare-to-work clients; federal
tax credits; on-site caseworkers; and
the initial investment, including training
expense. The benefit, of course, is a
reduced (welfare) assistance expense.

The tradeoff between the hiring cost
of welfare clients and the hiring cost of
employees through regular channels is
one of the main issues in this analysis. For
Cascade, the cost of hiring a welfare
client is less than that of a “regular”
employee. Cascade contracts with an
employment agency to hire “regular”
employees and officially employ them
until they satisfactorily complete training
and a probation period. This imposes
an additional cost above that for hiring
a welfare client. Even so, maintaining
the same size workforce with welfare
clients can become more expensive if
the retention of welfare clients is significantly
less than that for “regular”
employees.

Assuming that a program was implemented
for five years and then discontinued
and that cash flows are discounted
by 20 percent annually, the net present
value was positive for both parties, and
roughly as shown in “Cost and Benefits
of a Welfare-to-Work Company” (See
table, p. 80). Keller believes that Cascade
receives collateral intangible benefits
from the W2C program as well. For
example, a recent employee opinion survey
indicates an improved working environment,
and Cascade managers also
believe that overall retention rates are
higher than they would otherwise be
without the W2C program, perhaps due
to the awareness of diversity that W2C
has raised.

The Right Stuff

Moving people from the welfare rolls
to self-sufficiency has been a difficult
endeavor, but Cascade and its partners
have discovered some critical success
factors along the way. Cascade’s W2C
program has attained some measure of
success – 21 W2C clients have completely
rolled off welfare, no longer receive FIA
assistance, and have become independent
and financially self-sufficient.6 Keller
encouraged a U.S. House Ways and
Means Committee, in testimony given
April 2, 2002, to craft future welfare
reforms using Cascade’s program as a
model.7 Keller outlined to the committee
the three keys to a successful W2C
program:

An accepting organizational culture.

Education, not only of new
employees but also of existing
employees, about what it means to
be in poverty.

A strong system of support for
people moving from poverty to
careers.

While high-level program champions
were critical, the strong commitment
of individuals at Cascade, the FIA,
and all the other supporting agencies
who personally believed in this program
was just as critical.

The former welfare recipients are
not the only winners, however. The
company and society as a whole have
benefited. “The organization actually is
more energized,” according to Keller.
“People are more focused because they
know that the organization values
everyone there and we actually get
more done.”

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Alice Curry and Zoë Werner who
provided assistance with research and a preliminary
draft. I am deeply indebted to Linda Johanson, managing
editor of Administrative Science Quarterly,
who provided editorial assistance on many drafts
but who was much more a colleague than an editor
in this endeavor. Substantial support was provided
by Fred Keller, Mike Goldman, and Ron Jimmerson
of Cascade Engineering Inc., as well as numerous
other Cascade employees. Special thanks are due to
Joyce Bosscher of the Kent County FIA, who
devoted a great deal of time to many interviews.
Thanks are also due to other representatives of the
Kent County FIA, Michigan Works!, Goodwill
Industries of Greater Grand Rapids, Kent Community
Coordinated Child Care, Ross Innovative
Employment Solutions, and Angels Wings Transportation.

1 Generational poverty occurs when a family is in
poverty for two or more generations (see Payne,
R.K. A Framework for Understanding Poverty, Revised
Edition, RFT Publishing Co., Highland, TX, 1998).
Poverty is “passed on” when behavioral patterns,
values, and norms of the parents, which make
income above the poverty line less probable, are
adopted by their children.

2 Faith, Inc., is a private, nonprofit agency in Grand
Rapids that supports homeless people and welfare
recipients. It provides job training in light assembly
and packaging jobs on a contract basis to employers.

5 This cost-benefit analysis implies that the company
in question:
-Is a public corporation (note that Cascade is a private
company).
-Has roughly the same population as Cascade.
-Has a welfare-to-work program similar to Cascade’s,
which:
-Has access to and takes advantage of the same governmental
support (e.g., tax credits, wage subsidies,
etc.).
-Has similar relationships with social agencies as
Cascade (e.g., on-site caseworkers).
-Results in roughly the same retention performance
for welfare clients and “regular” employees.
-Has roughly the same percentage of welfare clients
in its workforce.
-Hires welfare clients for this subpopulation that displace
an equal number of employees from its traditional
hiring source.
Because comprehensive retention statistics for welfare-
to-work programs that would allow detailed
modeling are not available, we assume a retention
model that is based on learning curve theory. In this
case, we have two “learning” components. First, as
the company gains experience over time, it learns
how to better implement training and intervention
practices so that the turnover decreases. Second, as
an employee gains more tenure with the company,
the probability that he or she will be terminated
involuntarily decreases – this is consistent with the
welfare-to-work literature and Cascade’s experience.
This second component is not a “learning” process
in the traditional sense, but a learning curve model
that allows us to effectively represent the decreasing
probability of involuntary termination over time.
We calibrated two turnover models, one for the
welfare clients and one for the remaining population,
because the retention rates for these two
groups are typically different.

6 “Rolling off ” welfare is a term that describes the
point at which an employee no longer qualifies for
welfare assistance. As an employee progresses up
Cascade’s career ladder and receives a higher hourly
wage, his or her eligibility for governmental assistance
decreases. For example, once a certain wage
rate is exceeded, a W2C client may become ineligible
for childcare assistance.

7 Calabrese, D. Cascade Engineering press release,
April 2, 2002.

James R. Bradley is an assistant professor at
the Johnson Graduate School of Management
at Cornell University. He can be reached at
[email protected]

Is “collective impact” just a buzzword, or does it actually make an impact? Sarah Stachowiak of ORS Impact and Lauren Gase of Spark Policy Institute summarize eight important findings from a study examining collective impact’s effect on institutions, populations, and environments across 25 initiatives in the U.S. and Canada. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/does_collective_impact_really_make_an_impact

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